G20 Main Conspiracy Group Prosecution

November 21 - Aries - Life is good and about to get even better. You can't quite believe that? Well you will when you begin to see that everything is going your way at last. Keeping a positive attitude is easy when so many positive things are happening.

the inquiry into the death of Ashley Smith in a Federal Penitentiary five years ago has been shining a much needed light on policy and procedure at Correctional Services Canada, and on the behaviour and attitudes of some of the people it employs.

recently some people on my unit were discussing a newspaper article about the inquiry. this led to a conversation about the lack of proper care for people with physical and mental health needs here at Vanier, and the ways in which they're often neglected and mistreated. i asked if anyone would like to write their stories down for the blog and i got four back, to which i've added two of my own.

today i'm filing a Human Rights application against the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and Vanier Centre for Women. i hope to initiate some changes in their security classification system, which is opaque and discriminatory and contains no fair grievance process.

last night they screwed up when they turned the lights out. the hallway lights went out as well as the ones in our rooms, and for a few wonderful seconds it was completely dark. i'm really looking forward to darkness.

the darkness around here today is just the general mood. it has been an eventful and rather unpleasant day.

it's October. The leaves are turning, the nights are getting cold and i have only 8 weeks left in this sentence.

the organizing against the 2010 G20 summit has been part of my life in some form or other since the fall of 2008. it's hard to believe this part of my life is coming to a close, and at the same time it's hard to believe it's taken so long -- it's been almost 2.5 years since my arrest. oh, the wheels of "justice," grinding on.

and I'm one of the lucky ones!

as i start to wrap up my life as a prisoner and turn my mind to life on the outside I'm thinking a lot about other folks who still find themselves in the grip of the state.

When public safety minister Vic Toews introduced his new anti-terrorism strategy last month, many were stunned to discover the feds were targeting groups -- enviro, native and others -- as sources of extremism.

The announcement was tellingly made just as the Tories revved up their attempts to discredit foes of the Northern Gateway pipeline. But for those who've been making their way through the thousands of pages of RCMP and OPP documents pertaining to the G20 released under freedom of information, this shadowing of dissenting orgs didn't come as a major surprise.

Don't

Among the many things we'll never know in the aftermath of the Toronto G20 is how a political defence would have affected the trial of those charged in "the main conspiracy" case.

That's because the case ended last month when six of those charged pled guilty to the lesser offence of counselling mischief (and two of them also to counselling obstruction of police), and 11 had their charges withdrawn.

Don't

Group statement by 17 people charged with conspiracy during the G20 regarding a plea deal.

November 22, 2011 -- As people across Turtle Island look towards the global wave of protests against the austerity agenda, the memory of the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto looms large as both inspiration and caution.

We are 17 people accused by the state of planning to disrupt the leaders' summit -- the prosecutors call us the G20 Main Conspiracy Group.

Don't

Monday was the first day of what is scheduled to be an 11-week preliminary inquiry for what the Ontario Crown Attorney's office calls, the "G20 Main Conspiracy Group Prosecution." This prosecution will see myself, along with 16 other community organisers spend almost three months in court every single weekday, watching and listening as the Crown attorneys from the Provincial "Gangs and Guns Initiative" present evidence collected by a series of undercover cops who infiltrated community organisations across the country over a period of nearly two years prior to last year's G20 (an event which saw the city converted into "Fortress Toronto," as the heads of state from the world's 20 richest countries, along with more than 10,000 cops, occupied the city's downtown).